


if i close my eyes do you disappear (or am i just blind)

by verbanski



Series: sarah meet sara [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Chuck (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 07:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1156545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbanski/pseuds/verbanski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hate and love are two very strong four letter words</p>
            </blockquote>





	if i close my eyes do you disappear (or am i just blind)

(their relationship is simple

they hate each other because they are each other and, because of this, they understand the other more than anyone else ever will

and because of that, the term ‘hate’ isn’t as strong of a word as it could be.)

 

-

 

She should have known better than to track down this lead all the way to California on her own, but Sara’s never really been one to look before she leaped. That tended to take up (too much) time that could be better spent doing something more productive.

Besides, what counts is that she got the bastard; a few cuts and bruises are a small price to pay for coming out victorious in the end and it sure beats the alternative by far.

Unfortunately for her, successfully taking out an assassin does little to help with the blood that’s kind of gushing out of her abdomen at a concerning rate. Sara managed to stop it for a little while with a makeshift tourniquet but scaling a building to get to a second story window seems to have aggravated it. Notable mention also goes to the left side of her ribs where she caught an extremely lucky kick that also picked this time to act up against her. She was completely fine until she climbed into the house, and now Sara’s aching all over with even the smallest breath.

(mother _fucking_ league of assassins)

It probably wasn’t her best idea to come in unannounced this way but this entire trip hasn’t exactly been a collection of her greatest hits, so she chalks it up to consistency.

The door swings open abruptly, missing her by less than an inch as she barely gets her crippled ass out of the way. The woman coming through yells a quick, ‘be right back,’ down the hall before turning on her heel to lash out with a right hook, a glint of light gives away the knife she was hiding in her hand, too.

Sara ducks instead of jumping back, letting the other woman lunge directly into her personal space, using her own momentum to turn her around and catch her in a headlock with her own arm. The knife is digging in her shoulder slightly, the tradeoff is that her elbow digs right into Sara’s cut from the amount of pressure she’s using to keep her down. Sara’s leg comes out to kick the door shut and shoves both of them into it, using it as leverage to keep the odds in her favor.

“Aw, come on now, Walker, this no way to greet an old friend who came to visit you.”

An annoyed huff is let out from the other woman, the tension slowly receding from her body when she realizes who the perpetrator is. “We’re not _friends_ ,’ is the curt response as she elbows Sara in the gut to get her to back off.

She probably should’ve seen that one coming, but as loathe as she is to admit it, blood loss is definitely getting to her by this point, and she ends up staggering back less gracefully than she’d like. Sara lets out a grunt, more out of frustration for giving herself away rather than out of actual pain. To add insult to injury, when she straightens up again the next breath she takes in is a distinct wheeze she has no chance of covering up.

“Jesus, what the hell happened to you, Lance?”

“Guess I walked down the wrong dark alley tonight.”

Her chuckle is caught in her throat, replaced with a rather violent coughing fit that makes it feel like her left ribs decided to share their pain with her right ribs and they’re having a nice little powwow at her expense. “Look,” she says, taking as deep a breath she can, “Sarah, please?”

“Damn it, I’m gonna regret this,” she mutters. “Get to my house, okay? I’m sure you already know where it is, so get a head start the way you came and I’ll get out of here and meet you there in ten, alright.”

 

-

 

“Sara? You here?”

“In the bathtub.”

“Bathtub?”

“Bathtub,” she affirms, “you can wash blood away from porcelain no problem but I have yet to find a carpet cleaner that actually gets blood stains out of carpet.” She shrugs when Sarah pokes her head in. “Didn’t wanna drip anywhere and it was getting a little out of hand so, y’know.”

Sara waves her hand halfheartedly, not really having much strength left to do anything more. It’s definitely hitting her big time at this point but she trusts Sarah to take care of her before any permanent damage happens. Walker was always a hothead, she just never kept a grudge very well.

“This looks bad, kid,” Sarah sighs. She pushes the jacket aside to get to the ripped shirt that’s soaked through, Sara’s skin is slick from all the blood and slipping it off is no problem, it pulls away from the gash without catching. “Serrated combat knife?”

“I think it was a diving knife, actually.”

“Ah, yes, that makes it so much better,” she deadpans. “You hurt your ribs on the left or the right?”

She punctuates her question with a poke to each side respectively, the hitching in Sara’s breath on the poke gives it away before she gets a chance to answer. Sarah feels up and down her left side, checking each rib thoroughly, “I don’t think any of them are broken but you did a hell of a number on every single one.”

“What can I say? Don’t like half-assing things I do, you know me.”

“Unfortunately, I do – so, what else are you hiding from me? And, don’t you dare lie.”

“Nothing else, I’m good as new other than what you’ve already found.” Sara lifts up three of her fingers together, “scout’s honor, ma.” She offers a satisfied smirk in response to Sarah’s eye roll before she walks away to get supplies to clean her up and get her fixed. It shouldn’t have surprised her when Sarah came back and doused her cut in iodine without warning.

Sara lets out a pointed _ow_ but it does little more than make other Sarah laugh while she continues to clean up the wound; stitching up the thing is easy, it’s not jagged and it’s on a flat surface of her stomach that barely stings when she runs the needle through. As soon as she’s done dressing the cut, Sarah moves onto the ribs, although there’s not really much she can do for them outside of wrapping them as tightly as she can to deter overexertion without too much pressure and handing Sara a few oxy pills to take the edge off.

Both of them find their way to Sarah’s bed after changing into more comfortable shirts and pants, sipping on a beer, and waiting for Chinese to be delivered to the apartment. It’s probably not a good idea to be drinking when she’s got painkillers in her system but she figures it should be okay if Sara doesn’t plan on operating heavy machinery or rooftop hopping any time soon.

“Do I even want to know why you’re here, bleeding in my bathtub on a…Wednesday night?”

“I –“ she starts, not really sure how much she’s willing to tell Sarah right now. She shakes her head, laughing quietly at herself, “let’s just say, I ran into another old friend who wasn’t too thrilled about seeing me again.”

“All the way in California? You have a friend in Burbank you _had_ to see that hates you this much.”

“All the way in Burbank, California,” she singsongs. Sara wants to say more, to explain exactly who she was in town for and why and she really would tell her, it’s just easier if she kept this to herself. It’s safer, too, but she knows better than to voice that particular opinion to Sarah's face.

The doorbell rings a second later, saving her from trying to find a way to work around having to explain herself in detail. While Sarah answers the door, she occupies herself with the TV, flipping through the channels until she finds one that’s showing a movie that sounds decent enough to watch while they eat. If anything, it’ll give them a topic of discussion that doesn’t revolve around Sara.

“Your favorite’s still chicken fried rice, right?” Sarah asks, holding out a full container and fork for her. The question isn’t really much of a question, it’s really more of a statement, if anything. She doesn’t even wait for an answer after Sara takes the food, already moving to settle back onto her side of the bed.

In that moment she gives up, Sarah drops everything and chooses to ask about what she picked for them to watch instead like she always does.

She’s reliable like that.

 

-

 

By the time they’ve finished breakfast at the diner down the street, Sara knows two things for sure: one, that was the best stack of pancakes she’s had in a while and two, she should’ve sucked it up and stitched up her cut herself.

Details that Sara is currently missing include: why Sarah is dating some geeky man-child, why Sarah said that Sara is her sister, and why they had to bother explaining her presence at all when this guy runs into them at the diner.

(“oh, god, chuck, i completely forgot we were supposed to get breakfast together – i’m so sorry.”

“this is my…sister. she’s just visiting for a little bit.”

“sam. her name is sam, it’s short for samantha.”)

She plays along with it, willing to see where Sarah ends up going with this; it’ll be a good breather in between marks and it’s not like she actually has much of a lead to go on now, anyways. Sara/Sam can afford a few more days hanging out in town, catching up with her newly minted sister.

It turns out this guy’s name is Chuck and Chuck has no car of his own, which makes it kind of awkward when it’s time for him to go to work and Sarah’s Porsche only has two seats. Sara offers to hang back and just walk back to the hotel but he says he wouldn’t want to get the way of sisterly bonding with a hint of an edge to when he speaks. He manages to call his sister in time before she left the house and catches a ride with her, instead.

Her amusement is contained to a small smirk the entire car ride to the same shopping center where Chuck works at the Buy More, keeping her face turned towards the window to absently watch the scenery. It’s not until Sarah hisses a _shut up_ that she starts to actually laugh at this whole situation. “It’s not funny,” she continues, “he’s a nice guy.”

“Yeah, a nice guy for a nice girl who doesn’t use a throwing knife to push the snooze button on her alarm clock in the morning.”

“That was a bad morning, and, besides, Chuck is an assignment, it’s not like I wanted this.”

Sara shakes her head, turning to look Sarah in the eye, “please tell me you lost some sort of bet with the other kitty cats and that’s why you’re stuck babysitting. There’s no way you’d just be okay with this, Walker.”

“It’s complicated,” she sighs, gripping the steering wheel harder than necessary. “It’s more than just babysitting, Sara.”

“Hey, hey, it’s Sam, remember - you can tell your little sister anything, so spill!”

“I knew I should’ve picked a better cover story than siblings.”

“Yeah, not your finest ‘thinking on your feet’ moment there, big sis.”

Sarah looses a loud groan and runs a hand through her hair while they wait at the red light. Her forehead is scrunched the way it does whenever she was trying real hard not to punch Sara in the face for something or other. “I’ll explain everything at the Wienerlicious.”

After a beat of silent confusion, she explains that the Wienerlicious is a glorified hotdog-sausage place and, coincidentally, the same place the CIA chooses to house an operations base thus also making it her cover job.

“You’re fucking shitting me, right,” Sara blurts out when they pull up into a parking space in front of the restaurant.

“ _Oh man_ , this is way too good.”

 

-

 

Whoever first said, ‘how the mighty have fallen,’ clearly had visions of the future that featured assassin-turned-spy extraordinaire Sarah Walker dressed up in a Wienerlicious uniform – complete with evenly parted pigtails – front and center, she muses. If there was ever a perfect moment for that phrase it would definitely be now. Sara nearly takes a picture for posterity to use it as her background as a reminder that no matter how bad she gets beaten up, it will never be that bad in relation. Ultimately, she decides against it because having to prance around in that outfit all day is embarrassing enough on its own.

The restaurant is open now, and Sara finds herself sitting with a foot long hotdog as she mulls over the new information she’s just received while Sarah is manning the lunchtime rush.

She tuned out the part where Sarah was actually explaining the details of the Intersect, more concerned with trying to figure out whether or not the government actually had any intel on her and her former associates. Apparently, Chuck has this thing in his head and if he doesn’t flash on anything then there’s no dice. If he didn't recognize her at the diner then that’s good, so she doesn’t really feel the need to bother with it anymore; she lets Sarah continue, anyways, pretending to hold interest in what she’s saying – however, the more she drones on, the more Sara is confused about why the other Sarah has stuck around this long.

That whole issue aside, it turns out that Sarah wants to cash in her favor sooner instead of later, hence the whole sister thing. She wanted to keep her around longer to help her deal with a some black market arms dealer that Chuck flashed on a handful of days ago who’s trying to set up shop in town. The job requires a certain finesse that her current partner doesn’t exactly have and Sarah would prefer it if they could take care of this quietly without much fallout from involved parties.

It sounds simple enough and it’d be good to have someone else watch her six again; the times Sara _isn’t_ a one person act are few and far between. Also, catching bad guys in the lawful gray area under the radar is always a super fun pastime of theirs.

 

-

 

“Maybe I should've done this one on my own - we just started and you’re looking a little worse for wear there, Walker.”

“You sure, kid? You were the one hacking up a lung when we first got up to the roof.”

“That’s probably because I got a rack of bruised ribs served to me the other night, jackass.”

“Guess our little Tweety bird’s not so tough after all, huh.”

“Kindly do me a favor and fuck off, please.”

 

-

 

The arms dealer turns out to be a funny joke because him and his group of followers are feisty but they’re not particularly organized in any useful way. They’re a makeshift gang of thugs that are more annoying to put down because of sheer volume rather than actual skill.

Still, it is fun fight to pick after the other night and it doesn’t aggravate any of her injuries badly enough that a few pills and a cold pint couldn’t fix afterwards which is why the two of them find themselves sitting at a mostly empty billiards bar that seems to favor retirees.

They haven’t done more than order their drinks and a basket of fries, sitting in relative silence, when Sarah asks her how she feels and she answers with ‘like I need a beer’ without really thinking about the sincerity behind the initial question. She feels bad as soon as the words leave her mouth, and she quickly adds, “it’s nothing I haven’t been through before.”

Sarah seems to be satisfied enough with that, humming a neutral sound that she chooses to interpret as an affirmation, then asks “where are you off to after this?”

She uses that to change the subject and she probably meant for it to sound offhanded, like something that’s a filler instead of something Sarah actually cares about. If it were anyone else it would have worked, except Sara can always hear the worry in her voice through even the worst static.

There’s the truth – that there’s a tiny lead that's just as likely to send her to eastern Canada as it is to South East Asia, or she could tell her the other truth – that she has no clue whatsoever.

Both seem like a good idea, because both are answers that Sarah won’t push. In actuality, Sara could most likely get away with telling her anything, true or not, without having to worry about explaining herself. Sarah hasn’t wanted anything to do with _them_ ever since she walked away years ago and _them_ is pretty much all Sara has occupied herself with as of late.

In the end, she goes with neither of those options, picking up her beer that was just delivered and chugging the entire glass after offering a quick, ‘cheers.’ Sarah slides her own beer over once she’s done, and the look she gets makes Sara wish she’d just given a straight answer in the first place.

“Don’t say it,” she starts, taking a swig out of her new glass. “It’s a waste of breath.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“I know what you wanted to say.” She raises an eyebrow in challenge, a silent dare to tell her that she’s wrong and she doesn’t know what that look was about. This has gone on long enough that she knows what it looks like when Sarah wants to tell her to stop being a shadow that goes after old grudges. “You’re a broken record, Walker.”

“I wouldn’t have to be one if you just listened to me for once.”

It’s not that easy to just listen and be over with it. Sarah took the proverbial high road, turned herself over to the government she used to undermine in a deal to save her own skin, and it works for her because she doesn’t have family the way Sara does. She doesn’t have a sister and a mother and a father that she still cares about, doesn’t have anything (anyone) that can be used for collateral.

They tried to hurt the people she loves and Sarah knows that without her having to say it out loud, so Sara doesn’t, to avoid sounding like the same broken record she just called out.

“You did good out there tonight,” she says instead. This is the first time in a long time she’s been able to see Sarah without anyone breathing down her back and she finds she misses just being able to have someone she can depend on. She doesn’t want to waste this opportunity arguing over a moot point.

Thankfully, Sarah allows the shift, “I can still hold my own – what, you thought I’d be washed up already?”

The mood between them lightens instantly, and they’re back to avoiding the darker parts of their relationship in favor of actually having a relationship to maintain. “Nah,” Sara huffs, “more like you don’t belong here, playing house and serving hotdogs to teenagers that like your cleavage more than the food for minimum wage.”

“It’s not like that –“

“I know – well, actually I don’t, but I get it: you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. That doesn’t mean it’s not a complete waste,” she sighs, popping a few fries into her mouth and getting up from her seat. She gets her jacket on while she continues, “and before you get any ideas, I’m not trying to get you to come with me. I just think you deserve better than a lame costume and a boyfriend you have to save from tripping over his own shoelaces, big sister.”

She squeezes Sarah’s shoulders lightly, then drops a small kiss to her temple in lieu of a goodbye; it makes leaving her behind again a little more bearable and it saves her from having to actually fight back the tears that are threatening to fall.

 

-

 

( _it’s better this way_

since she doesn’t really care

and they’re not really the same person at all because how could they be if she’s still sitting at the bar

while she’s walking out the door)


End file.
